Followers

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Glenn Greenwald is a prominent American journalist, author,
lawyer and blogger. His writings and articles have appeared on several
newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, the Los Angeles
Times, The American Conservative, The National Interest and In These
Times. Greenwald has received different awards including the first Izzy
Award for independent journalism in 2009, and the 2010 Online Journalism
Award for Best Commentary.

Until a few months ago, he was a columnist and blogger for
Salon.com, but he left his job there and continued cooperating with The
Guardian newspaper which he has been contributing to since June 2011.

Greenwald has published four books which include “How Would a
Patriot Act?” and “A Tragic Legacy.” A progressive journalist, Glenn
Greenwald is an outspoken critic of the U.S. military expeditions in
Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and its war threats against Iran.He has written extensively on the underground operations taken by
Israel and the United States to empower and finance the exiled Iranian
terrorist group MKO which has declared as one of its key objectives the
overthrowing of Iranian government. With regards to the U.S. Department
of State’s decision in taking the name of MKO off the list of foreign
terrorist organizations, he says: “[t]his shows that anything the United
States government says about terrorism and really the whole concept of
terrorism itself should be viewed as nothing more than a ridiculous
joke. MKO is a classic group that is a terrorist organization. They have
engaged in violence against innocent civilians, they have devoted
themselves to overthrow a government using violence and there are
credible reports that they are the ones who are working with Israelis
and are behind the assassination of civilian scientists in Iran that
included the shooting of not only the scientists, but also in two cases
their wives.”

I had the opportunity to talk to Glenn Greenwald for an exclusive
interview which was originally appeared in Persian on Tasnim News
Agency. What follows is the full text of my interview with Glenn
Greenwald in which we discussed a variety of topics pertaining to the
international political and military developments.

Q: What do you think about President Obama administration’s
plans for shaping a new Middle East based on the national interests of
the United States and dominating the vast oil reserves of these
countries?

A: A crucial part of the Obama administration’s
strategy and the strategies of all the prior administrations in the
United States was to basically put into place dictatorships in the
Muslim world that would keep the population suppressed and serve the
interests of the U.S. government, particularly in the countries with
remarkable oil and energy resources. So you see the relationships the
United States has with the [Persian] Gulf states such as Qatar, United
Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. These are the governments which
suppress their population, but serve as loyal allies of the United
States and make oil available to the U.S. and the Obama administration
continues supporting them.

Q: In the recent months, we have been witness to the
continued killing of the pro-democracy protesters and imprisonment of
political activists in Bahrain. However, the U.S. government hasn’t
taken any practical steps to stop bloodshed and persuade the Al Khalifa
regime to stop using force and violence. What’s your idea in this
regard?

A: Well, this is a perfect example of what I was describing. The
governments which I named and the Bahraini government are unbelievably
oppressive. They murder protesters who are demonstrating peacefully, put
people in prison and torture them and the Obama administration does
nothing about that and continues to strengthen that regime through
financing it and even sending it a lot of arms, while the regime is
cracking down on the citizens in such a brutal way. The reason the U.S.
government supports Bahrain is that the regime allows the U.S. to
maintain a very large fleet of naval resources off the coast of Bahrain
that can be used to threaten Iran and that generally allows the U.S.
government to dominate the [Persian] Gulf region, and so in extreme for
the regime in Bahrain, that is basically the puppet and client
government of the United States, the U.S. government supports the regime
as it murders its own citizens and suppresses of all forms of freedoms.
And Bahrain is a perfect example of the strategy the Obama
administration has adopted to just dominate the region militarily and
help the dictators of the region suppress their populations.

Q: One of the electoral promises of President Obama was to
close the Guantanamo bay detention facility within one year after being
elected.However, on
January 7, 2011, he signed the 2011 Defense Authorization Bill which
placed restrictions on the transferring of detainees to the U.S. or
other countries, thus impeding the closure of the underground detention
camp. What’s your take on that?

A: The excuse the Obama administration gave was
that the people in the Congress refused to allow Obama to close down
Guantanamo. But the truth is that from the beginning, Obama’s plan was
to keep the system of Guantanamo in place and transfer the detainees to
the U.S. while people from all around the Muslim world still are allowed
to remain in prison without charges of any kind and without due
processes at any time. But to remove them from Guantanamo and placing
them in a new prison inside the United States would only add some sort
of a symbolic aspect to it. So it was always the Obama administration’s
plan to keep the Guantanamo open. They simply wanted to move it, not to
close it. And this Defense Authorization Bill which you ask about was
passed in December 2010 and January 2011 is a sort of legislation that
empowers the president whoever he wants on accusations of terrorism,
without having to charge that person with any crime, without having to
in any way offer the person the opportunity to contest the allegations
or present compelling evidence, and President Obama has signed a law
that actually strengthened this system of indefinite lawless detention.

Q: What’s your perspective on the U.S. drone attacks on
Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia and its violation of Iran’s airspace last
year in December 2011 and in the last week?

A: The drone attacks on Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia
have repeatedly killed all sorts of innocent civilians; women, children
and innocent men, and the Obama administration simply believes that it
has the right to kill anyone it wants anywhere in the world regardless
of who dies, and this is the policy that the Obama administration has
actually pursued even more aggressively than the Bush administration and
the drone attacks have increased significantly under President Obama.
He has used drones on six different Muslim countries; Iraq, Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. I should point out that President
Obama has extremely aggressive beliefs that in the name of combating
terrorism, he can kill whoever he wants or attack anyone he wants
without regard to any nation’s sovereignty. The ironic part about that
is that it’s precisely the drone attacks which cause terrorism in the
first place.

The reason why there are so many people in the world, especially in
the Muslim world want to attack the United States is precisely because
they watch on a regular basis the United States attacking their
countries, killing their children, innocent men and women and they come
to the conclusion that the only way to stop this is by having the
violence go both ways. The drone attacks not only kill innocent people,
but they make the problem of terrorism far worse. As far as the drones
in Iran are concerned, Iran has the absolute right, like any other
country does, to take down surveillance instruments that fly over their
land without permission. What strikes me is the way this is reported and
discussed here in the United States, and that is when Iran successfully
shoots down or disables a U.S. drone that has entered its airspace,
it’s talked of as if it’s some sort of aggressive action on the side of
the Iranian government.

But of course if Iran ever sent a drone anywhere near the airspace of
the United States, let alone into the United States, not only that
drone would be immediately shot down, but everyone in the United States
would talk of it as if it was a horrible act of war and would probably
result in bombs being dropped on Iran in retaliation. So you see here
this extreme double standard that the United States thinks that it has
the right to send drones on Iran’s airspace, but nobody in the United
States and almost nobody would think that Iran would have the right to
do the same to the United States.

Q: The United States has always called itself a champion of
combating terrorism and frequently criticizes other countries for their
alleged sponsorship of terrorist groups. But in a controversial
decision, they took the name of Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization off the
State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, and there’s
credible evidence showing that Washington has been supporting MKO in its
terrorist operations, both militarily and financially. Isn’t this a
hypocritical approach in dealing with the issue of terrorism?

A: This shows that anything the United States
government says about terrorism and really the whole concept of
terrorism itself should be viewed as nothing more than a ridiculous
joke. MKO is a classic group that is a terrorist organization. They have
engaged in violence against innocent civilians, they have devoted
themselves to overthrow a government using violence and there are
credible reports that they are the ones who are working with Israelis
and are behind the assassination of civilian scientists in Iran that
included the shooting of not only the scientists, but also in two cases
their wives. And because this group has paid so many influential
politicians in the United States and also because this group now carries
out terrorist operations on behalf of Israel and the United States in
promotion of the interests of Israel and the United States, they have
been removed from the list of terrorist organizations by the Obama
administration and this really shows that the United States is not
against terrorism.
The U.S. government uses terrorism continuously to serve its
interests. The United States government says that it is against
terrorism
only because terrorism is the word that applies to anybody who
opposes or impedes the agenda of the United States, and the willingness
to remove the name of MKO from the list of terrorist organizations even
though they are committed to the use of violence and killing of Iranian
officials proves how worthless the United States’ claims about
terrorism are.

Q: What do you think about the humanitarian impacts of the
anti-Iranian sanctions? In one of your articles, you alluded to some
facts regarding the scarcity of foodstuff and other goods in Iran as a
result of the sanctions. I’ll add the medicine, travel restrictions and
unsafe aviation fleet to your list. Isn’t it some sort of violation of
human rights by the United States?

A: Of course. One of the worst crimes that the United States has
committed over the last several decades was the sanctions regime that it
imposed on Iraq which killed several hundred thousands of children,
deprived people of basic food and medicine and strengthened Saddam
Hussein by making everybody in the country poor and dependent on him.
This is now repeating itself in Iran, not to the same extent yet but it
has its own effects where there are poor Iranian children who are sick
and unable to get medicine and are dying as a result. Obviously the
American officials openly brag about the destruction of Iranian economy
and the collapse of Iranian currency which they are causing with their
sanctions regime, and you see it’s a kind of collective punishment to
terrorize the Iranian people for the alleged crimes of their government;
the kinds of crimes that the United States has condemned the other
countries for committing for many decades. So absolutely the sanctions
regime which the United States is leading is really an act of war and a
way of making Iranians and innocent civilians suffer greatly, and
absolutely a kind of collective punishment that should be judged by the
decent people.

Q: What’s your idea about the U.S. mainstream media’s
portrayal of the developments in the Middle East and especially Iran?
They don’t allow the citizens to be aware of the fact that, for example,
the economic sanctions are paralyzing the daily life of ordinary
Iranian citizens, as they did with regards to the Iraqi people. Why do
the American media want to leave their people in ignorance and
unawareness?

A: The role of the U.S. media in general is to
serve the interests of the U.S. government. They claim that we have a
free media, but for a lot of different reasons, these media are owned by
the corporations and these corporations are very well to the U.S.
government. And so part of what any government wants to do when it wants
to be aggressive on other countries is to dehumanize their population;
to depict them in very simplistic ways. What the U.S. media generally
show of Iran is nothing more than the claims that they have evil,
extremist leaders and almost never talk of the complexities of Iran and
tens of millions of Iranian citizens who produce a complicated and
difficult to caricature society.

Q: How do you perceive the relationship between Obama and the
Israeli lobby? How much influence has the Israeli lobby had on Obama
and what role has it played in the reelection of Obama? Do you think
that Obama was at odds with Netanyahu on such cases as settlement
constructions, or they were simply superficial conflicts and they were
practically close allies?

A: Any differences between Obama a
nd Netanyahu are,
as you said, superficial and symbolic and never resulted in meaningful
action. If you turn to Israelis, they will tell you that the
relationship between the United States and Israel under Obama is closer
than it has ever been under any prior U.S. President. We saw that with
the Israeli attack on Gaza, the Obama administration 100 percent
justified and stood behind Israel, and just in the two recent votes in
the United Nations, one on Palestinian statehood and the other that
demanded Israel to open its nuclear stockpile to inspection, the United
States sided with Israel and isolated itself in almost the entire world.

So you have this extremely loyal relationship between Obama and
Israelis including Netanyahu, and it’s in large part because as many
prominent American columnists including Jewish and pro-Israel
commentators have observed there’s a very strong pro-Israeli lobby in
the United States which is very well-funded and very powerful and that
basically keeps both the political parties completely on the side of
Israel in every single controversy or dispute, even when doing so harms
the United States, they force both political parties to choose loyalty
to Israel over the interests of the United States and as a result,
neither political party is able, even if they want to, to in any
meaningful way pressure the Israelis or challenge them.

And despite all the loyalty that the United States has to Israel,
Israelis continue to pursue policies that the United States doesn’t want
them to do, like the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and yet
the United States in unwilling to punish them or sanction them because
of the domestic political pressures.

Q: Iran has assumed the three-year presidency of the Non-Aligned Movement in the 16th
summit of the organization which was held in Tehran in August 2012.
What’s your viewpoint regarding the importance of this summit for Iran
which the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Egyptian President
Muhammad Morsi along with several leaders from across the world
attended?

A: I think it’s significant because one of the main
objectives of Israel and the United States was to depict Iran as
isolated from the rest of the world. But what we are seeing is that to
some extent, they are Israel and the United States that are increasingly
being isolated from the rest of the world. And the refusal of so many
countries in denouncing Israel and the United States’ calls for not
attending the summit and otherwise isolating the Iranian government is
very significant in that regard as are the two votes that just took
place in the UN that overwhelmingly sided against Israel. So I think the
Israelis have become their own worst enemies through their extreme
pursuance of the ideological vision, their refusal to compromise, their
expansion of settlements that are illegal and their use of violence and
aggression have alienated a huge part of the world, much more than Iran
has, and if there’s anyone in the danger of isolation, I think it’s
Israel.

Q: And finally, what’s your viewpoint regarding Israel’s
aggressive war rhetoric against Iran and its continued threats of using
force against Iran? These war threats clearly violate the UN Charter,
but the Security Council hasn’t taken any practical steps to criticize
and punish Israel for its illegal behavior. What’s your take on that?

A: Well, I think that UN Security Council’s
enforcement of those roles is practically impossible because almost
everybody knows that the United States will veto any resolution to
condemn Israel for its use of those threats. It’s also the case that
many countries that are in the Security Council, mostly the United
States, but also Russia and China also use threats against other
countries in violation of the UN Charter, so everyone is a little bit
afraid of punishing Israel for violating rules that those countries
themselves like to violate, but it’s really the case that the United
States and Israel have made a joke of the UN Charter and continuously
threaten Iran to use military force against Iran, to bomb Iran, to keep
all options on the table including a military strike, and this is a
clear violation of the UN Charter and everything that it was intended to
stand for. As long as the U.S. has the veto power, the Security Council
will be completely unable to act against Israel’s violation of the UN
Charter.

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